Man or Machine?
by Shadow Sanctuary
Summary: Doctors kept a secret from him that he shoudn't have discovered. Now the truth comes out after Kaiba Seto is assaulted in an alleyway, forcing him to realize that he's just like the computers he builds...


Prologue: Man Or Machine?

Chrome glistened in the ominous glow of street lamps. Bathing in scarlet sands, metal swam underneath crests of white waves, surfing tides untouched by religion or politics. Wiry veins mutated into leeches, gorging on the wound as if it were a main course. Buried in the Red Sea were nuts and bolts, fastening light-weight elements to an island yet to be discovered. 

Although I was a native to this country, I felt like a savage jerked out of his tribe, thrown into a society that betrayed identity for the dark riches of discovery. Traitor to my homeland, I was launched light years into the future, experiencing a lifestyle that would disgust pious people. No priest could rationalize how I came to be, nor could geneticists crack the code of my DNA. I always wondered why I had no medical records from my childhood, why doctors refused to perform basic physicals on me. Up until now, I reasoned that my superior intelligence, quick learning style, and business strategies denoted decent genes. It seemed like a plausible story, one that biology could easily provide evidence for—unless I had no tissue or membranes to analyze through a microscope. Every memory of mine was filled with false perceptions, senses scrambled in overloaded hard drives, strangled by a voice broadcasting a robotic nature. Unknowingly, I had committed perjury against a jury of my peers, lying under an oath I never knew existed.

Who am I with software graduating to altered states, thoughts short-circuiting under the pressure of cutting edge inventions? How did I become a model for nanotechnology, starring in a photo shoot for cosmetics secretly tested on humans? When did I lose my freedom as a law-abiding citizen, thrust into flesh that cannot die a mortal death?

Studying my surreal anatomy, I marveled at the sophisticated engineering of my arm. Whatever God created this Adam must be a rogue scientist, some evil genius plotting to take over the world, forcing innocents to suffer emotional breakdowns by rearranging cellular chemistry. Stunned by my experimental frame, I stood in the unforgiving alley, the wind amplifying my chilling realizations. I bit into my bottom lip, crimson marring my perfection, drizzling off my chin like tears of blood. The drops mixed with wrath from the clouds, angels attacking the city with heavy showers, proclaiming the injustice of a man stripped of whatever truth he had.

 Don't cry for me, saints. I'm already dead. Heaven may be outraged by this abomination, but I felt no animosity, no terrible distress or hatred towards those who changed my framework. The only sensation I suffer from is lack of self-control, staying in the rain of a frosty, bitter hell.

_But it's not real, _I reminded myself, _none of this is real. _I'm _not real._

What _is _real? Simply what I can touch with tangible imagery, taste on the tip of my tongue; see through the windows of my visage? Or am I blind to the facts that fictitious events produced? How do I know that I am hearing the startled gasps of the gangsters who assaulted me? Are these misguided teens actually staring at me, their jaws hanging on wary hinges, vocal chords trapped in a realm that science fiction never illuminated on?  This knife in my chest, buried up to its hilt in my ribs, why can't my brain register any signals of pain? 

These questions invade my tower, downloading incurable viruses into my system files. Will the word processor in my head decipher these cryptic passwords, or will it destroy my psyche, allowing me to believe that I am an ethical glitch? Why must the vessel that I've known since birth violate faith and defy logic? 

As of this moment, I have no past, a broken present, and a future burdened by moral anguish. I hereby abandon my quest for a sense of self, obliterate every philosophy I've been taught, and reject all living individuals as if I never have had their conversational pleasures. This is the essence of Empiricism, atheism at its best, a soul so lost and confused that it craves destruction more than resolution. How can one such as myself arrive at an effortless solution to this insanity? I could consult monks in Buddha's light, implore Wiccans to share their radiance with me, request God the Almighty Father's guidance, but I would remain in the shadows, a limitless void that no underworld could fathom. Would any god or goddess be worthy of organizing my database's folders? Pray tell, divine deities of desperation, am I a rusting junkyard or a student of an unnamed master? Which is me, a man or machine?


End file.
